MIDDAY MARKETS: Cisco gains, techs mixed on hack attacks

Cisco surged at midday Wednesday, but techs were mixed as hacker attacks made it a busy day for Internet stocks. The Nasdaq fell 30.14 to 4,397.36, and the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 140.85 to 10,816.75.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index grew 2 to 600.40.

Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) maker of equipment that powers the Internet, gained 6 7/16 to 132 1/4 following its Tuesday report of better-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Competitor Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT) rose 2 7/16 to 123 7/16, while Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) dropped 1 1/8 to 53 1/16.

Hack attacks on leading web sites continued, though shares were unaffected. Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) lost 1 3/8 to 81 3/4 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) lost 6 5/16 to 366 13/16. Other hacking victims Ebay (Nasdaq: EBAY) fell 4 1/8 to 165 5/8, Buy.com (Nasdaq: BUYX) rose 3 3/8 to 28 1/2, and America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) rose 5/16 to 59 3/8.

Datek Online Holdings Corp. said its Web site crashed for 35 minutes as it became the latest apparent victim of computer hackers. There were also reports that E-Trade Group Inc. (Nasdaq: EGRP), down 5/8 to 22 3/8 was also having problems earlier in the day. E-Trade officials were not immediately available for comment.

Getty Images (Nasdaq: GETY), up 1 5/8 to 48 1/4, Musicmaker.com (Nasdaq: HITS), up 3/32 to 5 11/32, Topjobs.net (Nasdaq: TJOB), down 1/2 to 14, and Cheap Tickets (Nasdaq: CTIX) , down 1 3/16 to 16 1/2, were among the Net-related companies with earnings news Wednesday.

MarketWatch.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTW) fell 5/8 to 44 3/8 after it said Wednesday its fourth quarter loss was 64 cents a share, just beating First Call's consensus estimate of 66 cents a share.

On the IPO front, Vicinity (Nasdaq: VCNT) rose 25 3/8 to 42 3/8 in debut after it priced shares at $17, well above their range, which was raised many times in a sign of strong demand. Other IPOs Delano Technology, (Nasdaq: DTEC) and Landacorp (Nasdaq: LCOR) had yet to debut.

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) shares were up 6 percent, or 5 1/8 to 92 1/8 after the company said revenue could be up 25 percent and an analyst upped his earnings estimate.

Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) fell 13/16 to 36 1/4, Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ) lost 5/8 to 27 1/8 and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) rose 1/2 to 119 5/16.